Andrea K

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• Rated 3 stars

“Is love enough to complete you?

Mary, the story's protagonist, exists in a post apocalyptic world where most of humanity have become a zombie race known as the Unconsecrated. Living in a small isolated village, and believing themselves to be the last of the unturned, Mary and her people live under the rule of a sacred Sisterhood. The Sisterhood are tasked with protecting this surviving pocket of humanity, keeping order and unbeknown to the villagers guarding a few deep and dark secrets. Mary has been raised with her mother's tales of the ocean, a vast and salty expanse of water of which the only evidence was a photo now long since lost in a village fire. When Mary’s mother is bitten and subsequently infected she chooses to become one of the Unconsecrated instead of being killed. This puts in place a chain of events for Mary that has her challenge the rules of her village, the ways of the sisterhood and ultimately her entire way of life. Mary soon embarks on a path of discovery, to discover the answers to the secrets, to discover herself and to discover this mythical ocean told to her by her mother.

Let’s start with what I liked about this book. It was engaging, it had good pacing and that ‘it’ factor which prevents you from putting it down. It’s a refreshing break from the onslaught of Vampire books flooding the YA market right now, still has that supernatural element that brings all the fantasy lovers to the yard yet delivers something outside the box. It’s also good to see a zombie book aimed at girls. Much like the immensely popular The Hunger Games this book requires its Heroine to fight for her life in a dystopia where no protection will be afforded to you just because you’re a frail teenage girl. No strapping werewolf or sparkly vampire steps up to the plate to rescue and protect her. Mary does pretty much all the stunt work herself.

The first person narrative worked and it didn’t. It seems to be the in thing in YA fiction right now and to be honest it’s just not my cup of tea so I may have a built in prejudice. It had its places where it worked, particularly at the start of the book. The abrupt tone and brevity of the sentences worked to show us Mary’s grief and numbness. Though as the book wore on her continuing in this style had the effect of casting Mary as rather distant and unsympathetic in character. It also prevented us from seeing inside any other characters heads and as Mary turned out to be a little on the shallow side I could have done with the variety.

Overall I just wasn't feeling it for the main protagonist of this book. She came off as immature to bordering on mentally deficient in some parts. There was one scene where Mary and the object of her affections Travis were holed up in a house on a platform, because zombies can’t climb apparently. Isolated and alone with your true love, a horde of flesh eating zombies literally pressing in at your door and what does Mary do? Does she make the most of their confinement and use the time to develop their relationship? Does she put her head together with him and perhaps devise a clever escape plan? No to both. Mary locks herself in the attic day after day and broods. She sulks, she feels sorry for herself, she’s morose to the extreme. She plays dress up with some frilly frocks she finds in a trunk and has an epic emo moment where she writes her feelings out on notepaper, attaches them to arrows and then shoots them into the heads of the amassing zombie horde.

Mary came across as having very little compassion for anyone other than herself. People gave up their lives for her, Travis, her brother, even Harry would have risked all for her safety yet all Mary was interested in was seeing the Ocean. Despite hundreds of zombies and their unrelenting objective to eat her brains Mary still found time to sulk due to having her feelers hurt by pretty much all of the characters at some point in the story. Dear Mary, get over yourself.

Throughout the book Ryan tried to set up a love triangle between Mary and the two brothers Travis and Harry. She failed horribly. The romance had no development. As there was little in the way of character development there was no real interest in seeing either brother win her affections. We are told in a few sentences they grew up together. That’s the extent of the history you get on them. No explanation as to why they both find her so alluring or vice versa, other than Travis has nice eyes. Considering the underpinning theme of this book is seeking your own destiny and not settling for safe, combined with how pointless the love triangle was when all was said and done, then I have to wonder why she bothered at all. It seemed to be a redundant plot bunny that went nowhere.

Very few of the characters had any real depth, I felt no connection to them, they almost all had walk on parts. Character development was on the thin side in this book.

My main critique of the book was that there was just not enough information to make this universe plausible. What information we were given left more questions or seemed too improbable to be believable. Like how they made clothes, where they obtained reading and learning material, how they avoided incest. The books Mary came across on her journey all seemed so old that they disintegrated to dust so what were they using to learn from back at the village, because they weren't illiterate. Surely they would have the same aged literature as elsewhere so unless they were producing their own books you would assume the villages paper products where fast becoming dust too. If they produced their own where were did they obtaining fresh ink and paper from? Did they even have a printing press? Did they have any industrial machinery? The whole isolated tiny village thing with no outside connection just didn't bode, there weren't enough details provided for it to be credible. It was little things like this that nagged me right through the book. I needed more details, more background information, more answers. I can only suspend my belief so far.

The zombies themselves didn't make sense either as far as zombies go. They walk around and exist just fine with limbs hanging off, bones sticking out, fingers broken off to stubs yet an arrow to the noggin kills them dead... again. Fire will kill them, drowning in a river kills them; an axe in the chest kills them. The plot holes are glaring.

The most absurd condition of all was they are kept out of the village by a chain link fence. I realise zombies are not the cleverest supernatural creatures ever to be thought up but a chain link fence, that's it?

I found the ending to be very abrupt and unsatisfying and hardly an ending at all really, more like a lead in for the next book.

The moral of the tale; Is love enough to complete you? Will marriage and babies and the love of a man make you happy? If not don’t settle. Get out there and follow your dream. Get off the beaten path and make your own way… even if there are hungry zombies after your brains.”

Andrea K wrote this review Wednesday, June 2, 2010. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“The Dark Divine is a paranormal romance in which our protagonist Grace must decide between loyalties to her pious god-fearing family or her growing feelings and desire to help her estranged childhood friend and one time foster brother, Daniel. Daniel has had a tumultuous and painful life for one so young and he parted with his foster family and best friend Jude, Graces brother, in an abrupt and savage way.

Graces family refuses to discuss the events that led to their estrangement with Daniel and throw themselves subsequently into church and community work for God. Daniel returns to Graces life under the pretence of wanting to get into a coveted art programme and needing to take an AP art class, at Graces religious Holy Trinity school, to qualify for entrance. It soon becomes evident there is more to Daniel and his history with her brother than meets the eye. Secrets are being kept on both sides and Grace sets out to uncover them.

First of all just let me say the protagonist of this story has a great name. Grace Divine. For a story with strong undercurrents of biblical doctrine this is about as apt a name as one could hope to devise for a heroine.

Grace is the child of a pastor; this plot point is used to set up Graces world and her character. She lives in a religious home where common place teenage ways of life are eschewed for a more wholesome church centered life style. An over bearing, slightly neurotic mother has a no cell phone rule for Grace along with a no hooking your computer up to the internet in the bedroom rule. I have to say the whole computer thing gave me a case of twilight déjà vue. There was one scene in The Dark Divine reminiscent of Bella’s internet search on her old computer for Vampires the night after she had dinner with Edward Cullen. Thus went a similar scene in which Grace searched on her old computer for her monster.

Grace attends choir and bible study instead of the hanging out at the mall, and instead of kicking back with friends at the weekends she helps out at her dad’s church sorting boxes of food and clothes for charity. Some may find this goody good persona a little hard to stomach; I’ll admit to rolling my eyes in a few places at how prudishly boring Grace came across as in some places. Despain however manages to keep Grace a relatable character by giving her common ground with her target audience, providing her with moral and ethical dilemma that’s common to all. Honour thy father and Mother as an absolute or pull away from them and make choices for your own life and the possible betterment of others. Do parents always know best? And what of parents that are abusive to their children, do they deserve any honour at all? Grace learns there are no absolutes; life isn’t black and white despite what the bible says. Sin and forgiveness have a sliding scale and that slider sits at a different place for every one of us.

Despain manages to make her supernatural universe fairly believable; she created a plausible background story and incorporated fictional historical letters into the story that lent it a credible twist as well as filling in gaps to the story our narrator and main characters weren’t aware of. The supernatural monsters in Despain’s universe and called Urbats, Hounds of Heaven… or Dogs of Death according to other transcriptions. Created long ago to be god’s watchdogs and fight the forces of hell. Over time they gave in to their human emotions, acted on their desires until eventually their beast side took over and they became what we know today as werewolves.

Despite some excellent foreshadowing clues, which were obvious in retrospect, I was actually caught off guard by the ending. It’s not often a book blindsides me with its ending but this one succeeded. I can say with complete honesty I didn’t see that one coming so well done to Despain.

This was another book with another beautiful cover that had absolutely nothing to do with the story. I mean I like the pretty covers, don’t get me wrong, an attractive cover will get me to buy your book nine times out of ten. But how hard is it to make your pretty cover have at least some connection to the story?”

Andrea K wrote this review Wednesday, June 2, 2010. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“
"A birth is not really a beginning. Our lives at the start are not really our own but only the continuation of someone else's story."

I've just finished The Thirteenth Tale and really enjoyed it.
It contained a lot of the elements I enjoy, it was a story about stories, a book about books, it was timeless and well written, engaging, suspenseful, gothic and a little creepy. It dealt with siblings and twins, familial bonds and dark family secrets. There were ghosts and skeletons, literally. References to classic literature, medical studies, knitting, gardening, fanciful imagination's. Pretty much hit all my buttons in one.

It is the story of Vida Winter and her desire to have her true life story recorded before she dies. Until now Ms Winters story has been a patchwork of lies and fictions that suited and amused her. For as many biographies on her life that exist so do as many stories.

"I've nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fact that they make dull companions."

Vida Winter chooses Margaret Lea, a biographer of the dead for the task after reading a paper she wrote on a couple of brothers. Margaret lives above an antique book shop filled with stories of the long since deceased and this is where she feels at home in spirit as well as in body. She has never read any of Vida Winters modern books despite the fact she is lauded as one of the most prolific and well read authors in the UK. To familiarise herself with her works before she decides to accept the task of recording Ms Winters story she takes a rare book from her fathers collection called Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation, the book hooks her in but she is disconcerted to discover the book only contains twelve tales. which is also what makes this edition so rare. The Thirteenth Tale was never included in the original so it was recalled and renamed, however to the public the Thirteenth Tale, much like Vida Winter herself still holds a strong fascination and curiosity.
Margaret agrees to write the biography and soon falls under the spell of the story, as do we the reader. Vida's story is a dark tale of mental illness, abandonment, siblings, twins, sisters, lust, ghosts and murder. The more Margaret is drawn into it the more her own dark secrets and tragedies come to the surface and both Margaret and Vidas stories contain threads and elements that weave them both together. One story sitting on top of another.

The writing is beautiful, the themes although dark are not graphic or abhorrent, much is alluded too but the picture it draws in the mind is very clear. The book is full of quote worthy quips and set in a timeless era where one is left wondering if you are reading classic literature set in modern day or modern literature about a time gone by.


"Politeness. Now there's a poor man's virtue if ever there was one. What's so admirable about inoffensiveness, I should like to know. After all, it's easily achieved. One needs no particular talent to be polite. On the contrary, being nice is what's left when you've failed at everything else. People with ambition don't give a damn what other people think about them."”

Andrea K wrote this review Tuesday, June 1, 2010. ( reply | permalink )